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      Robbie Coltrane, the Beloved Hagrid in ‘Harry Potter’ Films, Dies at 72

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      The veteran Scottish actor and comedian also played a gambling-addicted psychologist in the 1990s crime series “Cracker.”Robbie Coltrane, the veteran Scottish actor who played the beloved half-giant Rubeus Hagrid in the “Harry Potter” films and starred in the cult British crime series “Cracker,” died on Friday in Larbert, Scotland. He was 72.His death, in a hospital, was confirmed by Belinda Wright, his British agent. Ms. Wright said that Mr. Coltrane’s family had not disclosed a cause, but that he had been “unwell for some time.”Mr. Coltrane veered from the comic to the gritty in a 40-year career in film and television, with turns as an antihero detective in “Cracker” (1993-96), a K.G.B. agent turned ally to James Bond and a gangster who disguises himself as a nun after betraying his fellow criminals in “Nuns on the Run” (1990).But those roles did little to prepare Mr. Coltrane to play Hagrid, a fan favorite from the “Harry Potter” books whose transition to the big screen would face the sky-high expectations of millions of young readers.Mr. Coltrane successfully embodied the 8-foot-6 half-giant. He appeared in all eight “Harry Potter” films, infusing the franchise with warmth even as he towered over the young witches and wizards at the center of the series who were embroiled in a fight against evil.The first film, “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” opened in November 2001 and went on to gross more than $1 billion worldwide, building on the already fervent global fan base of J.K. Rowling’s book series.Ms. Wright, Mr. Coltrane’s agent of 40 years, said the role was the reason he received a “stream of fan letters every week for over 20 years.”Fiercely protective of his privacy, Mr. Coltrane gave few interviews and could be hard-edged with reporters. But he said he had to cast that gruffness aside when he was embraced by a legion of young “Harry Potter” fans.“Kids come up to you and they go, ‘Would you like to sign my book?’ with those big doe-eyes,” he told The Guardian in 2012. “And it’s a serious responsibility.”Mr. Coltrane was born Anthony Robert McMillan on March 30, 1950, in Rutherglen, Scotland, outside Glasgow. His father, Ian Baxter McMillan, was a doctor; his mother, Jean Ross Howie, was a teacher.He grew up on the outskirts of Glasgow and enrolled in Glasgow School of Art, where he studied drawing and painting but struggled to capture his ideas on canvas.“I wanted to paint like the painters who really moved me, who made me want to weep about humanity,” he told The Herald, a Scottish newspaper, in 2014. “Titian. Rembrandt. But I looked at my diploma show and felt a terrible disappointment when I realized all the things that were in my head were not on the canvas.”As the prospect of a future as a painter dimmed, he was encouraged by a drama teacher who told him that he had acting talent after he appeared in a staging of Harold Pinter’s one-act play “The Dumb Waiter,” The Herald reported.After adopting his stage name as a tribute to the great jazz saxophonist John Coltrane, Mr. Coltrane found steadier footing when he moved to London. He worked as a stand-up comedian and actor, picking up theater roles and small parts in television and film productions.He attracted critical acclaim as Dr. Edward Fitzgerald, known as Fitz, the chain-smoking criminal psychologist in the hit series “Cracker,” whose alcohol addiction echoed Mr. Coltrane’s own issues with drinking. The role earned him the BAFTA award for best TV actor in 1994, 1995 and 1996.A turn as Valentin Zukovsky, a former K.G.B. agent turned Russian mafia kingpin, in the James Bond films “GoldenEye” (1995) and “The World is Not Enough” (1999) exposed Mr. Coltrane to a broader audience, particularly in the United States.There was nothing, however, that could compete with the global fame he found after he was cast as Rubeus Hagrid in the “Harry Potter” series. With his bushy beard and growling voice, Mr. Coltrane brought the beloved character to life. Mr. Coltrane, center, as Rubeus Hagrid in “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” (2009), with Jim Broadbent, left, as Professor Horace Slughorn, and Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter.Alex Bailey/Warner Brothers PicturesThe young actors who grew up on the sets of the “Harry Potter” films fondly remembered Mr. Coltrane as someone they could count on to lift their spirits with a joke or a word of encouragement.Daniel Radcliffe, who played Harry Potter, said on Friday that Mr. Coltrane “used to keep us laughing constantly as kids.”“I’ve especially fond memories of him keeping our spirits up on ‘Prisoner of Azkaban,’” Mr. Radcliffe said in a statement, “when we were all hiding from the torrential rain for hours in Hagrid’s hut and he was telling stories and cracking jokes to keep morale up.” James Phelps, who played Fred Weasley in the series, wrote on Twitter that when he was 14 years old and nervous on his first day on the set, Mr. Coltrane came over and said, “Enjoy it, you’ll be great.”Mr. Coltrane is survived by his children, Spencer and Alice, and a sister, Annie Rae. In the HBO Max retrospective “Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts,” which premiered on Jan. 1, Mr. Coltrane reflected on the role that introduced him to a new generation of fans.“The legacy of the movies is that my children’s generation will show them to their children,” he said. “So you could be watching it in 50 years’ time, easy. I’ll not be here, sadly, but Hagrid will, yes.” More

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      With Halloween Approaching, Here are Five Horror Movies to Stream Now

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      Halloween is around the corner, which means the annual scary film dump-a-thon is on. But don’t fear: These frightening treats will do the trick.‘Watcher’Stream it on Shudder.My pick for the scariest movie of the year is Chloe Okuno’s nerve-shredding feature debut about a young woman who swears she’s being watched and stalked by a man in an apartment building across from hers.The setting is Bucharest, where Julia (Maika Monroe, so good) has moved with her husband, Francis (Karl Glusman), after he gets a promotion. A killer is on the loose, so it makes sense that Julia has her suspicions about the creep she sees standing at a window seemingly observing her, the same guy she thinks followed her around a supermarket. Is she right? Or paranoid?Boldly feminist and intensely chilling, “Watcher” is a Halloween movie for people who think they don’t like horror but want to give a really scary and (mostly) gore-free horror movie a shot. (Watch it during the day if you’re antsy.) Okuno dishes out the heebie-jeebies with ruthless precision — watching is like being on a roller-coaster incline and seeing the tracks ahead splinter. Be warned: You may never look at grocery bags the same way again.‘Here Before’Stream it on Hulu.Laura (Andrea Riseborough) lives with her husband and teenage son on a quiet street in a small town in Northern Ireland. There’s a new family next door: Marie, her husband and their young daughter, Megan, who reminds Laura of her own little girl, who died in a car crash.When Marie fails to pick Megan up from school one day, Laura gives her a ride home. But on the way, Megan (Niamh Dornan) asks Laura if she remembers a cemetery — a bizarre question, one of many to come, that makes Laura start to wonder if Megan might be her own daughter reincarnated. Laura loses her grip on reality as she obsesses about who or what is possessing Megan, until a final, jolting twist torpedoes reality.Stacey Gregg’s feature debut, which she also wrote, is an intimate psychological thriller that relies not on mayhem but on moments so delicately icy, they should be stamped as fragile. A scene at a playground with tiny feet dangling in the air had my nerves on edge — one of many small but shattering moments that make this film an affecting and effective scare. Chloë Thomson’s cinematography is strange and spectral.‘Nocturna: Side A — The Great Old Man’s Night’Stream it on Shudder.Ulysses (Pepe Soriano) is old, and he’s feeling it. He gets lost in the building where he lives with his nagging wife, Dalia (Marilú Marini), and he can’t remember their estranged daughter’s name.Late one night, their neighbor Elena (Desirée Salgueiro) frantically bangs on their door with pleas for unspecified help. They refuse, terrified that if outsiders see the condition of their home, they’ll be one step closer to eviction. When Elena winds up dead, Ulysses wonders if she might have been a scared, lost ghost in need. The answer — depicted in touching flashbacks and distorted supernatural flourishes — is heartbreaking.The writer-director Gonzalo Calzada skillfully weaves together dread and sadness in his haunting Spanish-language ghost story that’s as much about forgiveness and regret as it is about the terrors of aging and our fear of death. (He also directed a shorter companion film subtitled “Where the Elephants Go to Die.”) With one finger, he plucks your nerves and with another he tugs at your heartstrings, which makes this a movie for a great scare and a good cry.‘Spirit Halloween: The Movie’Rent or buy it on Amazon.It’s not in the same league as KFC’s meta-camp holiday romance about Colonel Sanders. But this family-friendly horror comedy, made in collaboration with the Spirit Halloween retail chain, is delightful.The film starts in the 1940s when a witch (Michelle Civile) curses and kills an evil codger (Christopher Lloyd!) who wants to take over an orphanage. Fast forward to the present, when his spirit has made its way into the hulking animatronic characters at a Halloween store where middle school friends Jake (Donovan Colan), Bo (Jaiden J. Smith) and Carson (Dylan Martin Frankel) have secretly camped for the night. The kids battle a possessed teddy bear and other monsters until dawn, when Bo’s grandmother (Marla Gibbs!) reveals a prophetic secret.The director David Poag has said that for his feature debut he wanted to explore what was “most terrifying to our 10-year-old minds.” He nailed it, combining a heartfelt message about the tough transition from tween to teen with the us-versus-aliens spirit of “Stranger Things” and the trapped-in-a-store thrills of “The Mist.” Horror-curious kids 8 to 13 will get a kick out of it.‘Trick or Treat Scooby-Doo!’Rent or buy it on most major platforms.This new animated film made news recently for speaking out loud that which discerning Scooby-Doo fans have known since the series’s first episode aired in 1969: Velma likes girls. The young woman who makes the nerdy sleuth’s glasses melt is the evil-chic Coco Diablo, the exacting head of a Halloween costume crime syndicate.If you’re a longtime queer fan of the Scooby-Doo franchise, or animation at all, this exchange between Velma (played by Kate Micucci) and Daphne (Grey DeLisle) will be lesbian music to your ears:“Who am I kidding?” Velma asks, her voice desperate with puppy love. “I’m crushing big time, Daphne. What do I do? What do I say?”“Just be yourself,” Daphne replies.Beyond its queer significance, Audie Harrison’s film is my pick for young kids, as long as they won’t be too scared by cackling ghouls, and for nostalgic adults who want to introduce their kids to “The Ballroom Blitz.” Put it on with the family while you’re carving pumpkins or gorging on Halloween’s candy windfall. Or invite friends over for cocktails and homemade Scooby snacks and debate what Velma and Coco would wear at their wedding. More

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      ‘The Curse of Bridge Hollow’ Review: Attack of the Halloween Décor

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      A father and daughter team up to save a town after she sets loose a spirit that brings spooky decorations to life.“The Curse of Bridge Hollow,” a lighthearted horror comedy from the director Jeff Wadlow, boasts an appealing premise: The plucky teenager Sydney (Priah Ferguson), futzing around with a Ouija board, unwittingly sets loose a demonic spirit, which brings to nefarious life every Halloween decoration in town. Her father, Howard (Marlon Wayans), is a high school science teacher and hard-nosed skeptic; when the awakened skeletons, zombies and clowns terrorize the town, the rational father and credulous child must team up and meet each other’s views halfway. And in what seems like the perfect conceptual addendum, the town is widely renowned for its Halloween decorating. “Everyone picks a theme, and then you go big time on that theme,” explains a zealous neighbor (Rob Riggle), whose yard is decked out with zombies in tribute to “The Walking Dead.”This setup promises a gleeful escalation of comic pandemonium, but the film fails to deliver. One early set piece, in which deadly spiders run amok in a nursing home, shows potential but swiftly devolves into a tedious slog of limp action clichés and irreverent quipping. The most flagrant problem is the film’s lack of visual imagination. Wadlow, a good horror director, seems hamstrung by the family-friendly context and struggles to develop tension in the absence of a plausible threat of violence. (For a movie rife with fights and chase scenes, it has a body count of zero.) The creatures are dull and unoriginal across the board, failing to capitalize on the range of styles of decorations, while the evil spirit who is the film’s ultimate villain looks like he’s been outfitted from the discount bin of a Spirit Halloween.The Curse of Bridge HollowNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 29 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      ‘Plan A’ Review: Seeking Vengeance for the Holocaust

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      Set in postwar Germany, this film dramatizes the true story of a group of Jewish survivors who sought revenge through an astonishing undercover operation.Movies about the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust often focus on the long journey to begin life anew, but “Plan A” dramatizes attempts by some survivors first to seek retribution — on a huge scale. The directors, Doron and Yoav Paz, fashion an undercover thriller from the true story of some 50 Jewish vigilantes called the Avengers who tried to poison millions in German cities.Max (August Diehl) returns to Germany in 1945 to search for his family and finds antisemitism still widespread. He meets a Jewish brigade of the British Army that is secretly targeting war criminals for off-the-books executions. They’re efficient — cue a montage sequence of Nazis being shot in the head — and Max helps them until he learns of the Avengers, or Nakam, which means revenge in Hebrew.Max joins their mission to infiltrate a water plant, while their leader smuggles toxic substances from abroad. The scale and ambition of the plan can’t fail to create some suspense, even as it falls apart. But the storytelling is surprisingly slack, while it grasps for anguished romantic tension between Max and another plotter (Sylvia Hoeks). Diehl moves from looking stricken to single-minded but doesn’t bring much weight, moral or otherwise, to his pivotal protagonist.An opening voice-over asks what you would do if your entire family were murdered. Despite sounding like a preview trailer’s hook, the blunt question emotionally situates us in the Nazi hellscape more effectively than the film’s visuals of ruins and hide-outs. The rest of “Plan A” never quite rises to the challenge posed by this remarkable chapter in history.Plan ANot rated. Running time: 1 hour 49 minutes. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘Halloween Ends’ Review: It Probably Doesn’t

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      David Gordon Green wraps up his reboot trilogy for a horror franchise that never stays dead for long.Can we imagine future Halloweens without a new “Halloween”? We might have to, if David Gordon Green’s “Halloween Ends,” the wrap-up film of the reboot trilogy he began in 2018, plants a full stop on a 44-year-old franchise. Savvy viewers, though, will intuit the title’s missing question mark, understanding that Michael Myers, one of cinema’s fustiest boogeymen, is unlikely to remain interred for long.And for a spell in “Halloween Ends” it seems as if Green might be offering a creative hand to his possible successors, only to withdraw it in favor of business as usual. Four years have passed since the events of “Halloween Kills,” and Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) has given up the gunslinging-granny look and doomsday prepping in favor of a cottage-core aesthetic and memoir writing. She and her granddaughter, Allyson (Andi Matichak), have inexplicably remained in Haddonfield, Ill., where the townsfolk still blame Laurie for inciting Myers’s last stabbing spree and, presumably, for their plummeting property values.Also shunned by the locals is Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell), a geeky lad whose disastrous babysitting exploits three years earlier resulted in a dead child, a murder trial and an acquittal. Clearly, he’s perfect boyfriend material, and after saving him from the town bullies, Laurie introduces him to Allyson. Things go swimmingly until Corey encounters Myers one night in a dank cave beneath an underpass and learns there might be more to life than enduring insults and suffocating shame.At first, Corey’s involvement with the visibly declining Myers (again played by James Jude Courtney) is strangely ill-defined, a cross between caretaker and understudy. But as proximity to evil causes Corey to change — being an acolyte apparently does wonders for the libido — his too-rapid transformation constitutes a missed opportunity for the franchise. By pumping up Corey’s psychological damage, Green could have made a passing-the-torch movie, giving Corey a clear framework for his capitulation to the allure of slaughter. This also would have meshed perfectly with Laurie’s declaration that evil doesn’t die, it just changes shape.Changing shape, though, is something that exhausted movie properties struggle to do, and Green and his three co-writers soon revert to the comforting beats of the body count. This time, the townspeople — after virtually hijacking the previous installment — have dwindled to a few familiar faces, and there’s a touching reunion between Laurie and a flirty Officer Frank Hawkins (nice to see you, Will Patton, however briefly). He doesn’t know she’s already taken.The twisted bond between hunter and hunted that’s common to many serial-killer narratives (though rarely more overtly and eloquently than in Bryan Fuller’s terrific TV show “Hannibal”) has always been this franchise’s backbone. As if attempting to honor that, Green has made a movie that’s less frantic and more intimate than its predecessor, one that unfolds with a mourning finality. For me, its most evocative image is of a severed tongue circling lazily on a record turntable — maybe Green’s way of letting us know that he, at least, has nothing more to say.Halloween EndsRated R. Don’t pretend you don’t know why. Running time: 1 hour 51 minutes. In theaters and available to watch on Peacock. More

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      ‘Decision to Leave’ Review: A Labyrinth of Desire

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      Park Chan-wook’s latest, about a forlorn detective falling for his beautiful suspect, is an exuberant, destabilizing take on a classic film noir setup.One of the many pleasures of the feverish “Decision to Leave” is that the director Park Chan-wook clearly had as much fun making the movie as you will have watching it. A heady, baroque mystery infused with the kind of old-fashioned romantic fatalism that makes noir-darkened hearts flutter, it is a story of impossible love — though even a determined admirer may wonder if it’s also impossible to get a handle on this sly, ingeniously slippery movie.Never fear, though, as someone once cautioned me about visiting Venice, you will get lost. But navigating a mystery’s enigmas, sifting through its clues and unlocking its secrets are what draw us to stories like this, and here, even if you find yourself at an apparent dead end, Park will guide you back on track. Both times that I’ve seen “Decision to Leave” I questioned whether the movie was overly addled or I was, both being possible. Who’s the lovelorn gangster, I wondered. What does this or that plot kink have to do with the mystery woman? And why does one detective keep thumping his partner with an electric massager?Park drops you into the movie so abruptly that you would be forgiven for thinking that you had missed the first 15 minutes (or a prequel). As the staccato of bullets fills the soundtrack, a flurry of rapidly deployed scenes zip by, and the movie jumps from two detectives shooting at an indoor firing range and chatting, and then working a case and talking some more. The opening draws you right in with its destabilizing jump cuts, controlled freneticism, narrative ellipses and oddball swerves — cut to a fog-wreathed discussion about insomnia — which creates an inviting ambiguity. It’s unclear what’s happening; it will remain unclear for a while.There’s a dead body, of course, which soon materializes with the first glints of the main story. While hiking, a man has died under suspicious circumstances, leaving a broken watch and beautiful widow, Seo-rae (Tang Wei, wonderful), who’s called in for questioning by the two detectives. The lead investigator, the sleep-challenged Hae-joon (Park Hae-il), is instantly and conspicuously drawn to her. By contrast, the other detective, Soo-wan (Go Kyung-pyo), the guy with the electric massager, is more leery, harshly noting that she doesn’t seem especially upset by her husband’s death. Hae-joon replies that his wife wouldn’t be either, a revelatory comment about a man who proves more complicated than he appears.Hae-joon puts Seo-rae under surveillance and before long, in classic old Hollywood detective fashion, he falls for her, hard. He trails and watches her, tracking her every move whether she’s at work (she’s a caregiver for older, housebound patients) or at home with her cat and droning TV. Sometimes, he imagines himself in Seo-rae’s apartment — you see him there, too — where he hovers near her, almost within kissing distance. And when she falls asleep sitting on her couch, eyes closed as a column of smoldering ash precariously droops from her cigarette, he also imagines himself holding an ashtray under its burning tip.Sometimes a dying cigarette isn’t just a cigarette, but an intimation of later smolder and ash. While Hae-joon’s solicitousness toward Seo-rae can read as sweetly considerate (or stalker-ish), his investigation rapidly morphs into fascination and then life-changing, brain-fogging obsession. Under the cover of his detective work, he insinuates himself into Seo-rae’s life — or does she coax him in? — until they’re sharing rooms, meals and rainy walks. He loves her, but even as they grow close, he remains distrustful. From the start, he has decided who she is, putting her in a box, an idea that Park literalizes at one point with a shocking, gasp-inducing shot of her seated alone in the multiple square-shaped rooms of her apartment.On the most elemental level, “Decision to Leave” is a classic detective story driven by Hae-joon’s desire for Seo-rae and by his desire (one shared by the viewer) to know who’s done it and why. But nothing is ever straightforward with Park, an exuberant, adventurous maximalist who likes to kink up narrative and delights in the plasticity of the medium. Here, he plays with time and space, blurs the past with the present and inventively employs flashbacks and fantasy sequences that deepen the mystery, disrupt the flow and draw attention to the filmmaking itself. The effect can be dazzling, and enjoyably dizzying.Park’s most obvious touchstone is “Vertigo,” Hitchcock’s sublime 1958 l’amour fou about a detective who falls in love with a woman he thinks he’s lost only to find and lose her again. Park scatters several amusing nods to the Hitchcock picture throughout “Decision to Leave,” notably with lurid close-ups of eyes, rooftop chases and a gnarled tree jutting atop a treacherous precipice. Like the detective in “Vertigo,” Hae-joon — who periodically uses eye drops — spends a great deal of time looking at the woman he falls in loves with, though whether he ever actually sees her remains a question that’s teased throughout the story.However informed by Hitchcock, “Decision to Leave” is pure Park Chan-wook — his earlier movies include the original “Oldboy” and the erotic thriller “The Handmaiden” — through and through in form, style and temperament. And while Hae-joon may be outwardly driving the story, it is Seo-rae — and Tang’s devastating performance — who imbues “Decision to Leave” with its deep, then deeper wells of feeling. From the very first destabilizing moments of this movie, Park dazzles you with the beauty of his images and the intoxicating bravura of his unfettered imagination. And then, just when you think you have found your bearings, he unmoors you yet once more, blowing minds and shattering hearts, yours included.Decision to LeaveNot rated. In Korean and Chinese, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 18 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Till’ Review: He Was Someone’s Son, Too

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      Chinonye Chukwu’s new film reminds us that before his gruesome murder galvanized a civil rights movement, Emmett Till was a 14-year-old boy with a doting mother.Some stories can seem too difficult to tell, though that doesn’t seem to have crossed the mind of the director Chinonye Chukwu. In “Till,” her haunted and haunting movie about Emmett Till, the 14-year-old whose barbaric murder in Mississippi in 1955 by white supremacists helped galvanize the civil rights movement, Chukwu revisits the past while doing something extremely difficult. She makes this grim American history insistently of the moment — and she does so by stripping the story down to its raw, harrowing emotional core.In brisk strokes both sweeping and detailed, Chukwu — who shares the script credit with Michael Reilly and Keith Beauchamp — revisits Till’s life, winding back the clock to Chicago in 1955. There, the cherubic-faced Emmett (a tender Jalyn Hall) lives with his widowed mother, Mamie (a superb Danielle Deadwyler), in a cozy house and is eagerly preparing to visit relatives in Mississippi, a trip that hangs over his mother like a worrying cloud. Yet Mamie dotes on Emmett (she calls him Bo) and, as a gift, buys him a wallet at a department store, where she tartly rebuffs a white salesclerk who tries to steer her toward the basement.By the time that Emmett is riding a train to the South — midway through the trip, the Black passengers stand and move en masse to the rear — a divided world of post-World War II optimism and jarring racial segregation has opened up. These divisions widen once Emmett arrives in Mississippi, where he stays with the family of Mamie’s uncle, a sharecropper, Moses (John Douglas Thompson). Soon, Emmett is helping Moses and his children pick cotton under the relentless sun — the palette suggestively lightened — and the camera sweeps over Black bodies toiling in the field as Antebellum America comes to unsettling life.The horrors of that world soon emerge with devastating consequences. Emmett, along with some relations, visits a small grocery store that caters to Black customers but is run by white people. Things rapidly spiral downward when Emmett walks into the store and meets the contemptuous gaze of the woman behind the corner. The Northern salesclerk who insulted Mamie earlier was just a better-mannered racist; he was also an ugly foreshadowing. Now, away from Mamie and the life he knows, Emmett amiably tries to engage the woman, Carolyn Bryant (Haley Bennett), whose hostility ends in catastrophic violence. That evening, several white men kidnap, torture and murder Emmett, throwing his mangled body in a river.Chukwu doesn’t show Till’s torture and death, a decision that is a clear, emphatically ethical artistic choice. “Till” is the third feature-length movie that she has directed, the latest following her 2019 drama “Clemency,” about a Black prison warden in crisis, and her work here is impressive. She handles the larger-scale period backdrop of “Till” and sprawling cast with confidence, using her expanded tool kit prudently and without sacrificing the intimacy that helped distinguished “Clemency.” And, just as she did in that drama, which was at once anchored and elevated by Alfre Woodard’s powerful lead turn, Chukwu distills a story — its gravitational force and emotional depths — into the movie’s central performance.With fixed intensity and supple quicksilver emotional changes, Deadwyler rises to the occasion as Mamie, delivering a quiet, centralizing performance that works contrapuntally with the story’s heaviness, its profundity and violence. The weight of Emmett Till’s murder, the horror of it — as well as both the history that preceded his death and that which followed it — is monumental, impossible, really, for one movie. Rather than attempt to convey that significance in its full sweep, Chukwu condenses it into meaningful details, fugitive moments, tranquil ellipses, explosive gestures and, especially, the face of one woman in joy and in agony.Chukwu keeps focused on Mamie even as the world presses in, including after Emmett’s death when she’s swept up in a larger national drama and arranges an open-casket funeral — a bold, far-reaching decision — and then later travels from Chicago to Mississippi to attend the trial of his murderers. During the trial, a grotesque sham, reporters swarm, flashbulbs pop and highlighted figures enter and exit, including Medgar and Myrlie Evers (Tosin Cole and Jayme Lawson). The movie doesn’t go deep into the era’s policies and politics, but while the trial unfolds it sometimes slips into explanatory, near-pedagogical mode, including in some scenes that seem more for the viewer’s (perhaps white viewer’s) benefit than for the actual story.In the decades since he died, Till’s murder and the still-shocking photographs of his body have been the subject of innumerable news stories, scholarly articles, nonfiction books, novels, poems, documentaries, podcasts, websites and exhibitions. At the 2017 Whitney Biennial, a painting of his corpse by the white artist Dana Schutz drew protests and criticism from Black artists. Historical markers installed in Mississippi that designate significant locations in his murder have been repeatedly vandalized. And, in March, Congress finally approved a bill — known as “the Emmett Till Antilynching Act’’ — making lynching a federal hate crime. Nearly 70 years after his death, his legacy and body remain contested ground.Perhaps that’s why I keep returning to the image of Mamie with her mother, Alma (Whoopi Goldberg), who’s sitting near-immobilized with grief after his death. Alma’s limbs hang heavily, as if they had turned to lead, an image that mirrors Jesus as the Man of Sorrows and summons up visions of other grieving Black families. Here, as elsewhere, including the scene of Mamie with Emmett’s corpse that evokes innumerable pietàs, the sanctity of these bodies is as undeniable as their humanity. In the end, what makes “Till” cut deeply is Chukwu’s insistence that before Emmett was a victim of pathological racism and an emblem for change, he was a boy, a friend, a cousin, a grandson and Mamie’s son — a beautiful, loving and loved child.TillRated PG-13 for racist violence and language. Running time: 2 hours 10 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘The Same Storm’ Review: A Lockdown Grab Bag

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      Featuring actors mainly performing from their own homes, this multistory drama clumsily wrestles with the struggles of everyday people during the first months of the pandemic.Do you remember the cringey “Imagine” video that Gal Gadot and her league of naïve celebrities devised and posted on social media at the start of the pandemic, in March 2020? “The Same Storm,” written and directed by Peter Hedges (“Dan in Real Life”), and shot using iPhones and laptops around the same time as Gadot’s much-derided lockdown anthem, isn’t all that different. It’s a well-intentioned gesture of solidarity that tries so desperately to be relatable, it feels alienating.The film — a series of vignettes staged as video-chat conversations between two parties, with each segment introducing a new lockdown-specific dilemma — features a cast of 24 actors, most of them performing in their own homes.There’s Mary-Louise Parker as a cam girl who tries and fails to turn on her latest client, a nurse in Queens who is scarred from witnessing too many Covid-related deaths. We see Elaine May as a woman in denial of her Covid symptoms, and in the next scene there’s a group Zoom funeral held in her honor. Later, a recovering alcoholic (Sandra Oh) attends a virtual support group when she relapses following her son’s attempted suicide. And so on and so forth.Hedges’s script is wildly uneven, and it especially fails whenever issues of racial injustice are broached, with those mini-stories — such as one in which a young protester (Moses Ingram) argues with her policeman father (K. Todd Freeman) over attending a Black Lives Matter rally — often resembling some kind of corporate diversity and inclusion training.At the beginning of the film, the conditions of the shoot are revealed — May fumbles with her camera, and other members of the cast sheepishly grin as they prepare to enact the dramas of regular people. Some stories are more convincing than others, but most are simply boring — especially now, when the surrealism of lockdown has lost much of its edge.The film proves one thing, at least: Like many of us, Hedges and his actors clearly had too much time on their hands.The Same StormNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. In theaters. More